Previous research demonstrated that individuals’ recalled enjoyment of experiences can be strongly influenced by their subjective feeling of “distorted time progression” (that is, whether they feel that time passed surprisingly quickly or surprisingly slowly). When people were led to feel that time “flew by”, people evaluated the exact same experience more positively than when people were led to feel that time “dragged by” during that experience. In other words, the perceived passage of time influences evaluations of enjoyment even when the experience being evaluated is held constant. My project examined this in the context of waiting. When waiting, distractions make the wait less painful. I attempted to determine how much of this is due to just having something interesting to do (less boredom), and how much is it due to the increased likelihood that people will lose track of time and later feel that time “flew by”?
Making waiting time fly by....
